"Welcome to my Website.
Come on in and explore my Off-Broadway
productions and full play catalogue; my days as Artistic Director of
two important venues of play development; various bits and pieces;
articles and essays— and (after a teaching career spanning 40 years)
my insights into the art and craft of the writing of plays.”
FG

Frank Gagliano and bust of Anton Chekhov. on the grounds of the Chekhov Memorial Museum, Yalta, Crimea
(April 23, 2012)

First postings include: MY FIVE DAYS WITH CHEKHOV (pdf text and photos about my participation in the recent 2012 Chekhov Conference — as playwright/performer and Keynote Speaker — at the Chekhov Memorial Museum in Yalta, Crimea), and my KEYNOTE ADDRESS (“Looking For Chekhov, This Traveler Comes Home”) and the text of my play,"My Chekhov Light", which I read/performed on 26 April, at the Chekhov Museum. Also included are posts by Austin Pendleton, Heather Helinsky, Kristin Johnsen-Neshati, Joyce Carol Oates and Constance Congdon. The link will be featuring ongoing critical insights and creative pieces from Chekhovians the world over.

Plus "The Commedia World Of Lafcadio B"(inspired by a play of Luigi Pirandello)
The texts of all three VOODOO TRILOGY pieces
(LAVEAU/LAFCADIO/CONGO) can be viewed
in the plays link Listen to mp3 excerpts from the CONGO SQUARE score in the audio from musicals link To access the playwright's narrative on the journey of the Voodoo Trilogy, click here:Gagliano's Voodoo Trilogy Narrative "Marie Laveau image credit: New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum, Jerry Gandolfo, Wikipedia."

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[INTRODUCING]

GUEST ARTIST

#2:

Jerry L. Crawford

Playwright, Director, Educator, Dramaturge,

Movie
Reviewer, Sports Journalist, Memoirist, Mentor Extraordinaire, Fellow of
the College Of Fellows of the American Theatre, Sensitive Critic of the
Contemporary Scene. . .

“I join in congratulating the career of Jerry L. Crawford.” —Stephen Sondheim

Playwright Jerry L. Crawford is the second artist in my Guest Artists' link, where you can read: Jerry's Bio—plus Extracts from his recently published memoir (“Past Light”)— plus the complete list of 33 Crawford plays and productions —plusan “Epilogue Of An Epilogue,”written specifically for the link—plus samples of his “Yooper" Film and Play Reviews (all with photos)— plus the complete text of the play Hal Prince thought was Jerry’s best, “ROCK'...AND A SOFT PLACE.”

If you’re an enthusiast and devotee of, and all-around nut (as I am) for, the great American legendary lyricist and composer JOHNNY MERCER,
and for the other genius composers and lyricists
of the golden age of American song (Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George and
Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Harold Arlen, Yip Harberg, Frank
Loesser, Harry Warren, Jimmy Van Heusen, Jule Styne, and so, so, so many
others),you will want to log on (often) tojohnny mercer/american songbook
FIRST POSTING

What Anton's Leap is about:Part political thriller, part sex farce, playwright Frank Gagliano's first novel ANTON'S LEAP is narrated by free-associating, sex-obsessed ballet star, Anton Otchayanie (which in Russian means Despair). It is 1982 and Anton wants to defect from Soviet Russia. But to do so, he will have to survive a train collision in Prague, join a traveling troupe of erotic jugglers, fall in love, screw a lot, create ballet and Commedia dell' Arte scenarios, get sodomized with the nose of a Commedia dell' Arte mask, seek a super-strength serum, struggle to find an artistic persona, and develop compassion for other human beings. All this, while fleeing (in drag) from a Gay KGB agent and Anton's own psychopathic twin brother Vahktang who--in a Kafkaesque horror scene--confronts Anton in a Prague Fun House. Richard Wagner's testicles also play a role. For fans of picaresque flights of literary fancy like "Candide" or "Gulliver's Travels," and for devotees of unhinged surrealists like film director Federico Fellini, ANTON'S LEAP is a must-read tour-de-force.

Anton's Leap (back cover)

"I just finished reading Gagliano's delicious, delightful and magnificently- ?sexy novel, ANTON'S LEAP; I loved it! I am thinking now, that if somehow, against restrictions: biological, geographical, and perhaps, moral -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Susan Sontag, Madonna and The Smashing Pumpkins had managed to produce a child together, that child might well have written ANTON'S LEAP."Joseph Graves -- Artistic Director, Beijing Institute of World Theatre and Film

"ANTON'S LEAP does a lot of things. The book will make you angry. It will make you laugh. You'll see yourself in the characters. You'll wish you could be a part of the story. Or not. There is action, suspense, sex, more sex, and some suspenseful sex with action. There is intrigue. There are jokes. Above all, ANTON'S LEAP is an uncompromising work by one of America's greatest writers, a man who first challenged off-Broadway audiences in the 1960s with his unique view of life and love. Frank Gagliano now uses that same gift for words to make mince meat out of readers. Like a great Fellini movie, ANTON'S LEAP is indescribable, surreal, and infuriating. And fun. And those aren't bad things at all."?? --Raymond Benson, author of JAMES BOND--THE UNION TRILOGY??

"A Rush of Blood to the Head,"

"Much is written in other reviews about the virtuosity of the language; the wildly inventive entertainment; the richness of the characters -- all of which I see, and raise: a delightful filthiness not experienced since Roald Dahl's 'My Uncle Oswald'; a narrative with the propulsive force of a literary orgasm; and most rewarding of all, a surprise crash course on why artists love art. Although readers who know little about theatre, dance, or the arts in general will enjoy "Anton" for the crazy-entertaining romp that it is, those who know and love the arts will recognize that they are experiencing a master class by an author who knows and loves theatre as much as Anton knows and loves fornication. I know it, and I love it. Read this book."
Michael Rashid, Actor/Director,
Artistic Drector, Black Elephant Theatre,Chicago

"Anton's Leap" is a wild and wacky psycho-sexual romp that reads like a triple cross between ‘Tom Jones,’ ‘Myra Breckinridge’ and ‘The 39 Steps’...and all the other things that make life worth living."Simon Saltzman, Free lance arts journalist and theatre critic: President of the Outer Critics Circle; Member New York Drama Desk; American and International Theatre Critics Association.